Thursday, 12 May 2011

GREEN VOLUNTEERS UPDATE

April was a very busy month for The Green Volunteers (see blowing our green horn).

ADEX 2011

We had a booth at ADEX 2011 (Asia Diving Expo) at Suntec 22nd April (Good Friday) to 24th April. To help Sea Shepherd’s Anti Bluefin campaign (operation Blue Rage). We launched our tuna awareness campaign called “When you see Tuna – Think Panda”. The logic behind this being the Bluefin tuna is as endangered as the Panda and since you’ll never eat a Panda why should we eat Bluefin tuna. We disguised our booth and called it “Bamboo forest products” and offered a sampling of “Panda” meat (actually vegetarian mock meat) and invited people to taste it. We were surprised at the number of people who willingly agreed to try the “meat” of an endangered animal (both locals and ‘Ang mohs’). Many were horrified that we were offering “panda” meat and reactions ranged from rage to threats to call the police, one woman burst out crying and we had to convince her this was not Panda meat.We did manage to get this message across that the Bluefin tuna is just as endangered as the Panda so they should avoid odering them at Japanese restaurants.If you can help secure a high traffic public venue eg shopping mall for this awareness campaign please let me know.

Bodyshop has just sponsored the new batch of Green Volunteers’ flyers in full colour and on recycled paper. Thank you Bodyshop. Bodyshop has been a pioneer in advocating fair trade, women’s rights and anti-child labour practices. For more information on the good work they do, please visit their website.http://www.free2work.org/

Talking about slave labour and child exploitation etc, visit this interesting website. They actually grade major companies on their Corporate Social Responsibilities. Some really interesting and unexpected insights for instances Adidas gets a C minus. You could use this website as your buying guide and shun. Big name companies that are socially irresponsible and greedy.Tell your friends about this site, it’s time we put a stop to exploitation especially of children.

The Singapore Buddhist Federation and Kong Meng san Phor Kark monastery have started collecting can tabs for the PROSTHESES FOUNDATION at Chiangmai. These are melted down and made into parts for artificial limbs and given free of charge for those who need them. They are custom made for the needy irrespective of nationality, race or religion (this kind of organization I will always help) and they have so far supplied lower limbs to amputees in Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos and even Malaysia.The Green Volunteers started collecting can tabs for the Prostheses Foundation more than 6 years ago but had to depend on our service learning groups going to Northern Thailand to bring them up for us. Now there is a more reliable way of sending them up through the Singapore Buddhist Federation. We all drink canned drinks so it’s easy to collect the tabs, start collection at your office or school.

For more information go to http://youth.kmspks.org/. A real win/win situation recycling and helping a really worthy cause.

BLOWING OUR GREEN HORN

IKEA – 2nd, 3rd, 16th and 17th April at IKEA Tampines and Alexandra gave talk/demo on how to make organic enzymes and insect repellent. Very good turn out.

19th April (Tuesday) gave general assembly to entire school of about 1,200 students. Very challenging.

ADEX SHOW SUNTEC

22nd (Good Friday) to 24th April, Suntec. We launched our “When you see Tuna – Think Panda” campaign to support Sea Shepherd’s anti-bluefin campaign “Blue Rage”. An article and pictures will soon be posted on the Green Volunteers Blog.We hope to see you at one of our walks or at our butterfly garden. If you have an interesting green project or need help/advice on one you are doing, we would be happy to help in any way we can. I’M AWAY

From 8th to 18th May, I am bringing a group of student leaders from NUS to recce Northern Thailand for a group to go in December to do reforestation and work in the hilltribes. Probably no access to internet, if urgent you can try sms as sometimes we get signal.

1 comment:

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